AMD Radeon R9 290 delayed to November 5 (but performance improved)

Word hit the web that AMD has decided to delay the introduction of its Radeon R9 290 graphics card to November 5, 2013, one week later than previously anticipated. According to the rumor, AMD just send a new driver to reviewers that significantly improves performance on the R9 290 and extended the NDA until November 5th so reviewers get more time to redo all their benchmarks.

The driver reportedly makes the R9 290 extremely competitive with GeForce GTX 780. A side-effect of that would be that the recently launched Radeon R9 290X could be rendered unattractive. It remains to be seen if the driver also proportionately improves performance on the R9 290X, and how AMD ends up pricing the R9 290.